The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-01-29
HAD NATURE A BEGINNING9

edged as bold Spectator in philosophy
and theology. His article is remarka-
BILE for the presentation of an original
philosophy of nature and God. He al
most assumes that all thought that is old
is untrue because it is old. Truth is as
old as God and nature; and the proba-
bility is, that the first mind created,
learned, or acquired a knowledge of
some truth.
How are we assured that we know
the truth now? It is grounded in the
trustworthiness of our mental faculties.
The common element in all knowledge,
is that we know ourselves as knowing
and in knowing all other things and
truths. This is the fundamental fact
in intuition and experience. If mans
mental nature is not reliable, knowledge
is impossible. The earliest men known
to history had minds as richly endowed
as ours, and were as capable of learn
ing and knowing the truth. Moses and
Socrates had as strong minds as our dear
Br. Merrifield, and they believed in be-
ginning of creation. A hundred or five
hundred years from now all that we
hold and teach as true, in morals, sci
ence, philosophy and religion, will be
old. Will it become untrue by grow
ing old
Newness as proof of truth is I'M
known to science, logic or philosophy.
The most unquestioned and best at
tested truths known to man are not
discoveries of this century. The evil
dence of truth to the scientific mind is
veri6cation by experiment, or the the
DRY must account for, explain and har-
monte with the facts. This sort of proof
demands time. The doctrine that has
stood the criticism of ages, and has
been verified time and again by differ
emit investigators is proved to be true.
What proof does our author give that
the doctrine of a creation beginning, and
miracles, are untenable assumptions?
He does not attempt proof. Doctrines
held as true by the greatest minds of
all nations and ages, he sets aside as
untenable assumptions. Moses, Jesus,
Paul, Newton, Bacon, Locke, Whewell,
Herschell, Faraday, Clerk Maxwell,
Boyle, all held these doctrines as true.
What pity they were so ignorant as
not to know they were absurd assump-
tions
No fact is better established by sci
ence than that the order of the uni
verse, which reveals the presence and
action of mind, had beginning. Mat
ter, life, instinct, reason, all had be-
ginning, if astronomy, chemistry, ge-
ology, biology, and psychology, are true.
Atoms, molecules, worlds, plants, an
imals, men, are not eternal. They had
beginning; are creations, and were
created.
We have the miracle of creation. A
new order was introduced, new forces
began to act, new laws were estab-
lished This was supernatural, not un-
natural, above nature, not opposed to
nature. That is supernatural, which is
superior to nature, and is the efficient
producing cause of nature. God is
therefore supernatural cause; creation
is a supernatural act
The assumption of our author that
the universe is eternal because God
must be eternally active, contradicts
philosophy as well as science. This
theory would make the effect as old as
the power that caused it, the creature
as old as the Creator, the child as old
as his father, and the building as old as
the builder. Mind must exist before it
can think, the will must exist before it
can act, the cause must exist before it
can work, and God existed before he
could create. This theory ignores the
fact that God, as rational and moral
being, is free, and has the ability to act
or not to act, to create or not to create
as he wills. If he has not he is not
free, and if he is not free, he is not a
moral being, has no moral character,
and cannot perform moral action.
The universe is either self-existent
and eternal, and this would prove
atheism; or it is the whole or a part of
God, this is pantheism; or it has been
created by God, and therefore had a
beginning, and this is theism. Will
our author, in order to avoid creation,
the supernatural and miracles embrace
atheism or pantheismP We think not:
most decidedly not.
Our excellent author (unintentionally,
of course), misrepresents the doctrine of
creation in order to make it appear
absurd. Theism does not teach that
creation came out of nothing, that the
world was made out of nothing or any
such absurd nonsense. God created
matter where there was no matter
before; he created worlds where there
were no worlds before; plants where
there were no plants before; animals
where there were no animals before;
men where there were no men before.
But he did not create something from
nothing, nor out of nothing. Moses